Subject: English Language Arts (9 - 10), or Technology Education (9 - 12) Title: Literary Elements in LiteratureDescription: This lesson is applicable to any story or novel in literature. The students will be introduced to twelve literary elements through a podcast. They will then be divided into small groups to complete activities involving story and literary elements.

Subject: Business, Management, and Administration (9 - 12), or English Language Arts (9), or Technology Education (9 - 12) Title: Producing Poetic Podcasts (Hey, That's Alliteration!)Description: In this culminating lesson for a poetry unit, students will create a video podcast that summarizes a specific poem, analyzes the poet's use of literary elements, and infers the meaning of the poem (theme). The podcast must use a talk show format to discuss the literary elements and theme. The talk show may feature the students or animated characters using xtranormal.com.

Subject: English Language Arts (9 - 11), or Technology Education (9 - 12) Title: Digital Story Writing: Cultural MythsDescription: You are a folklorist observing the lives and cultures of different people. You want to tell the world about their culture, beliefs, and values. You and a group of other folklorist are going to research the lives of a an ethnic group, and create a digital story about their lives, and present it to all the folklorist at the "Who are They?" convention.

Subject: English Language Arts (9 - 10), or Technology Education (9 - 12) Title: Book TalksDescription: This lesson is designed to give teachers and students an alternate approach to the traditional book report. "Book Talks" enable students to read a book and create a photostory presentation. Students will give example passages from the book and critique the story.

Subject: English Language Arts (7 - 9), or Technology Education (6 - 8) Title: Poetry and Music Fun with Chris DaughtryDescription: This language arts lesson grabs students' attention by incorporating a popular musician. The lyrics to "Over You" include vivid language that makes identifying figures of speech intriguing. The students will identify similes, metaphors, and hyperbole within the lyrics. The students will analyze the lyrics and create an MP3 file or podcast with their analysis.

Subject: English Language Arts (9), or Technology Education (6 - 8) Title: Movie MadnessDescription: This language arts projects motivates students through being a movie-based project. This lesson will have a duration of five days. The students will view a movie of their choice and analyze the movie to complete a chart listing literary elements for them to identify. Then the students will create a PowerPoint presentation based on the chart and present the information to the class.

Subject: English Language Arts (9), or Technology Education (9 - 12) Title: Novel Study - Independent ReadingDescription: Students will choose a novel from a teacher-created reading list. After reading their choice novel, students will prepare a 1-1/2 to 2 minute multimedia presentation to "sell" other students on the novel. In addition, students will prepare a poster advertising their novel for display and a written summary of the novel that identifies various literary elements of the novel.

Subject: English Language Arts (9 - 10), or Technology Education (9 - 12) Title: Analyzing the Poetry of Emily DickinsonDescription: Students examine ways in which life events of a poet influence the poetry written. After researching Emily Dickinson's biography, students analyze her poetry and present a collage depicting one poem. The lesson can be easily adapted to the study of many other poets.

Thinkfinity Lesson Plans

Subject: Language ArtsTitle: I've Got the Literacy BluesAdd BookmarkDescription: Students will be singing the blues in this lesson in which they identify themes from '' The Gift of the Magi'' and write and present blues poetry based on those themes.Thinkfinity Partner: ReadWriteThinkGrade Span: 9,10,11,12

Subject: Language ArtsTitle: Teaching the Epic through Ghost StoriesAdd BookmarkDescription: In this lesson, students connect to the oral tradition of epic storytellers by sharing their own oral tales of ghosts and goblins and monsters.Thinkfinity Partner: ReadWriteThinkGrade Span: 9,10,11,12

Subject: Language Arts,Social StudiesTitle: Kate Chopin's ''The Awakening'': Searching for Women and Identity in Chopin's ''The Awakening''Add BookmarkDescription: In this lesson, one of a multi-part unit from EDSITEment, students examine how gender roles in nineteenth-century America affect the choices made by the central character in Kate Chopin's The Awakening. They analyze Edna Pontellier's character development specifically in relation to other characters in the novella and generally in relation to women's roles in 19th-century America.Thinkfinity Partner: EDSITEmentGrade Span: 9,10,11,12

Subject: Language Arts,Social StudiesTitle: 'The Red Badge of Courage'': A New Kind of RealismAdd BookmarkDescription: In this lesson, from EDSITEment, students compare specific excerpts from Stephen Crane's The Red Badge of Courage to first-hand accounts of Civil War battles, in text and images. They also list elements of Crane's style that contribute to the novel's realism. To conclude, they create a first-person account that employs the basic stylistic characteristics of The Red Badge of Courage.Thinkfinity Partner: EDSITEmentGrade Span: 9,10,11,12

Subject: Arts,Language Arts,Social StudiesTitle: Folklore in Zora Neale Hurston's ''Their Eyes Were Watching God''Add BookmarkDescription: Students explore the way African-American author Zora Neale Hurston makes use of closely observed black folk life in her novel Their Eyes Were Watching God. Students read the novel, research Hurston's own life and ethnography, listen to her WPA recordings of folksongs and folktales, and compare transcribed folk narrative texts with the novel itself.Thinkfinity Partner: EDSITEmentGrade Span: 9,10,11,12

Subject: Language ArtsTitle: Japanese Poetry: Tanka? You're Welcome!Add BookmarkDescription: This lesson, from EDSITEment, contains three activities which use the Japanese poetic form of the tanka as a prompt for students to reflect on the nature and purpose of different poetic rules and devices. The activities involve a close study of the conventions and thematic concerns of tanka poems, opportunities for students to compose their own poems, and detailed structural analysis of selected tanka.Thinkfinity Partner: EDSITEmentGrade Span: 9,10,11,12

Subject: Language ArtsTitle: Arabic Poetry: Guzzle a Ghazal!Add BookmarkDescription: This lesson, from EDSITEment, contains three activities for students to understand and appreciate the intricate poetry of the ghazal, a pre-Islamic verse form still popular today. These activities involve experimenting with English rhymes in the style of the ghazal, studying real ghazal poetry to deduce its structure and rules, and group composition of ghazal-style poetry in English.Thinkfinity Partner: EDSITEmentGrade Span: 9,10,11,12

Subject: Foreign Languages,Language Arts,Social StudiesTitle: Chinua Achebe's ''Things Fall Apart'': Oral and Literary StrategiesAdd BookmarkDescription: This lesson, from EDSITEment, introduces students to African novelist Chinua Achebe's first novel, Things Fall Apart, and to strategies of close reading and textual analysis. Through this lesson, students learn about Nigerian culture and history and compare African oral storytelling traditions with European linguistic and literary forms.Thinkfinity Partner: EDSITEmentGrade Span: 9,10,11,12

Subject: Language ArtsTitle: Listening to Poetry: Sounds of the Sonnet Add BookmarkDescription: This lesson, from EDSITEment, introduces students to the formal terms used to describe sonnets. The central focus throughout is on learning to appreciate the sounds of poetry. By focusing on the sounds of poetry, the lesson seeks to demonstrate that there is an underlying sense of form or structure at work in language, whether we happen to know the names for the formal elements of poetry or not. Included in the lesson are seven sound experiments, designed to help students understand how form, meter, and rhythm all combine to shape our experience of poetry and the meanings we derive from it.Thinkfinity Partner: EDSITEmentGrade Span: 9,10,11,12

Subject: Arts,Language Arts,ReligionTitle: SpiritualsAdd BookmarkDescription: This lesson, from EDSITEment, introduces students to the role that spirituals played in African American history and religion. The goals of this lesson are to learn about the role spirituals have played in African American history and religion, to examine Harriet Tubman's use of spirituals in her work for the Underground Railroad, to explore the continuing power of the spiritual in the Civil Rights Movement and as a shared American heritage, and to gain experience in working with oral tradition; biography; and song as types of historical evidence.Thinkfinity Partner: EDSITEmentGrade Span: 9,10,11,12

Subject: Arts,Language ArtsTitle: Childhood Through the Looking-GlassAdd BookmarkDescription: This lesson from EDSITEment explores the vision of childhood created by Lewis Carroll in Alice in Wonderland. Students begin by looking at Carroll's photographs of the real Alice for whom Carroll imagined his story and compare the image of childhood that he captured on film with images of children in our culture. Then students read Alice in Wonderland with special attention to the illustrations that Carroll made for his book, and explore the relationship between words and pictures by creating an Alice illustration of their own. Next, for contrast, students compare Carroll's vision of childhood with that presented by the Romantic poet William Blake in his illuminated Songs of Innocence and Experience. Finally, students consider the interplay of image and text in their own favorite children's literature and how the vision of childhood presented there compares to their experiences as children. Several pieces of literature appropriate for use with this lesson are suggested.Thinkfinity Partner: EDSITEmentGrade Span: 6,7,8

Subject: Language Arts,Social StudiesTitle: Faulkner's ''As I Lay Dying'': Images of Faulkner and the SouthAdd BookmarkDescription: This lesson, one of a multi-part unit from EDSITEment, introduces students to the American writer William Faulkner and the Southern settings for his novels. Students research Faulkner's own family background and history and compare what they discover with the settings in As I Lay Dying.Thinkfinity Partner: EDSITEmentGrade Span: 9,10,11,12

Subject: Arts - Drama - Language Arts - Writing (composition) - Religion - Christianity - Religion - Islam - Social Studies - GeographyTitle: Perception of PlaceAdd BookmarkDescription: In this Xpeditions lesson, students write paragraphs describing their perceptions of a specified place and compare notes to see the variety of ideas and feelings toward this place. They come to understand how and why people perceive places in different ways.Thinkfinity Partner: National Geographic EducationGrade Span: 9,10,11,12

Subject: Language Arts - Literature - Language Arts - Story Telling - Social Studies - GeographyTitle: New Takes on Old TalesAdd BookmarkDescription: In this Xpeditions student activity, students revamp a classic fairy tale so that it takes place in today's world. They base their stories on original fairy tales by the Brothers Grimm.Thinkfinity Partner: National Geographic EducationGrade Span: K,1,2,3,4,5,6,7,8,9,10,11,12

Subject: Language Arts,Social StudiesTitle: Families in BondageAdd BookmarkDescription: This two-part lesson from EDSITEment draws on letters written by African Americans in slavery and by free blacks to loved ones still in bondage, singling out a few among the many slave experiences to offer students a glimpse into slavery and its effects on African American family life. In Part I, students examine the letters of Hannah Valentine, an enslaved woman who lived on a Virginia plantation. In Part II, students read letters from a fugitive slave to his still-enslaved wife and from a black Union soldier to his still-enslaved daughters, confronting directly the anguish of separation that was a constant factor in African American family life during slave times, when children and parents, husbands and wives, were routinely sold away from one another. Students explore the emotional terrain revealed in these letters by comparing the response to separation voiced by Valentine with that voiced by the Union soldier and the fugitive slave.Thinkfinity Partner: EDSITEmentGrade Span: 9,10,11,12

Subject: Language ArtsTitle: Mark Twain and American HumorAdd BookmarkDescription: In lesson, one of a multi-part unit from EDSITEment, students analyze the use of literary conventions and devices to develop character and point of view in Mark Twain's The Celebrated Jumping Frog of Calaveras County. They investigate the purposes and significance of literary humor and examine Mark Twain's storytelling style in relation to that of other American humorists.Thinkfinity Partner: EDSITEmentGrade Span: 9,10,11,12

Subject: Language Arts,Social StudiesTitle: Perspectives on the Slave NarrativeAdd BookmarkDescription: This lesson, from EDSITEment, introduces students to one of the most widely-read genres of 19th-century American literature and an important influence within the African American literary tradition even today. The lesson focuses on the Narrative of William W. Brown, An American Slave(1847), which, along with the Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass(1845), set the pattern for this genre and its combination of varied literary traditions and devices. Students learn about the slave narrative and its importance in the abolitionist movement, gain experience in working with the slave narrative as a resource for historical study, evaluate the slave narrative as a work of literature, examine the slave narrative in the context of political controversy as an argument for abolition, and explore themes of self-actualization and spiritual freedom within the slave narrative.Thinkfinity Partner: EDSITEmentGrade Span: 9,10,11,12

Subject: Language ArtsTitle: Practical CriticismAdd BookmarkDescription: The goals of this lesson, from EDSITEment, are to analyze the verbal devices through which poems make meaning, to compare one's personal interpretation of a poem with the personal interpretations of others, and to develop standards of literary judgment.Thinkfinity Partner: EDSITEmentGrade Span: 9,10,11,12

Subject: Language ArtsTitle: Tales of the SupernaturalAdd BookmarkDescription: In this lesson, from EDSITEment, students explore the origins and development of gothic literature. The goals of this lesson are to explore the origins and development of a literary genre, to investigate how shared imaginative concerns link the members of a literary period, to examine the evolution of a literary tradition, and to compare works of literature from different eras.Thinkfinity Partner: EDSITEmentGrade Span: 9,10,11,12

Subject: Arts,Language ArtsTitle: 'You Kiss by the Book'': Shakespeare's Romeo and JulietAdd BookmarkDescription: This lesson, from EDSITEment, complements study of plot and characterization in Romeo and Juliet by focusing on Shakespeare's use of lyric forms and conventions to spotlight moments in the drama and thereby heighten the impact of the action on the stage. Students examine the first meeting between Romeo and Juliet as an enactment of figurative language in a context of competing poetic styles, explore the use of poetic forms to impart perspective in later episodes of the play, and gain experience in close reading and the interpretation of verse structure and imagery.Thinkfinity Partner: EDSITEmentGrade Span: 9,10,11,12

Subject: Language ArtsTitle: Critical Reading: Two Stories, Two Authors, Same Plot?Add BookmarkDescription: Students make predictions about the stories and analyze story elements, compare and contrast the different stories, distinguish between fact and opinion, and draw conclusions supported by evidence from their readings.Thinkfinity Partner: ReadWriteThinkGrade Span: 9,10,11,12

Subject: Language Arts,Philosophy,Social StudiesTitle: Profiles in Courage: ''To Kill a Mockingbird'' and the Scottsboro Boys Trial Add BookmarkDescription: In this lesson, one of a multi-part unit from EDSITEment, students study select court transcripts and other primary source material from the Scottsboro Boys Trial of 1933, in which two young white women wrongfully accused nine African-American youths of rape. Students then consider how an awareness of this historical event vivifies Tom Robinson's story in Harper Lee's To Kill A Mockingbird.Thinkfinity Partner: EDSITEmentGrade Span: 9,10,11,12

Subject: Language ArtsTitle: Weaving the Multigenre WebAdd BookmarkDescription: Students analyze the elements of a novel in many different genres and then hyperlink these pieces together on student-constructed Websites.Thinkfinity Partner: ReadWriteThinkGrade Span: 9,10,11,12

Subject: Language Arts,Social StudiesTitle: Flannery O'Connor's ''A Good Man is Hard to Find'': Who's the Real Misfit?Add BookmarkDescription: In this EDSITEment lesson, students explore and challenge dichotomies (such as black and white, good and evil, faith and doubt) while closely reading and analyzing Flannery O Connor's A Good Man is Hard to Find. In the course of studying this particular O Connor short story, students learn about the 1950s South, including evolving transportation in the U.S., the landmark Brown v. Board of Education Supreme Court case that helped divide the Old South from the New South, and the literary genre known as Southern Gothic, or Southern Grotesque.Thinkfinity Partner: EDSITEmentGrade Span: 9,10,11,12

Subject: Language ArtsTitle: Analyzing Character Development in Three Short Stories About WomenAdd BookmarkDescription: Students read three short stories about women; discuss the development of female characters, gender differences, and society's expectations; and write scripts in which the characters discuss their similarities and differences.Thinkfinity Partner: ReadWriteThinkGrade Span: 9,10,11,12